(Chris Kardish/Bluffton Today) U.S. Rep. Tim Scott speaks to Republican party officials and Beaufort County Council Chairman Weston Newton before addressing a crowd at the opening of the party's Bluffton headquarters.

U.S. Rep. Tim Scott made an appearance in Beaufort County on Saturday for the opening of Republican Party headquarters as the 2012 election cycle rounds its last corner on the path to November.

Scott, who rose to prominence in the conservative wave of 2010 as the first black Republican in the history of the South Carolina caucus, is running for re-election in the redrawn 1st Congressional District that now stretches from Charleston to Bluffton. It encompasses most of the county, with the exception of the northwest corner beyond Beaufort that’s still held by Rep. Joe Wilson.

Scott’s stop by the Bluffton headquarters at the Wells Fargo Bank on Arley Way followed a visit to the Beaufort headquarters and preceded a mid-afternoon trip to the Hilton Head Island branch.

Before the assembled party faithful, Scott focused his remarks on defense cuts totaling about $1 trillion over the next decade starting Jan. 1 and a recent stop-gap spending bill to fund the government for another six months.

Scott voted against a budget compromise last year that dealt a $487 billion defense cut with the threat of another $500 billion if a special committee failed to come up with additional spending reductions.

“In the face of the Constitution, in the face of the budget challenges, Congress and the President used our troops as pawns last year,” he said.

He cited the weakening of military capabilities in a turbulent time and 1 million in civilian job losses, a number based on an Aerospace Industries Association study. Total employment between Beaufort’s three military installations topped out at 15,600 as of 2010, according to a study commissioned by the Beaufort Regional Chamber of Commerce. In an interview after his address, Scott laid the blame at the feet of the president and U.S. Senate, pointing to a House vote Thursday replacing the defense cuts. Democrats have countered that the GOP’s refusal to budge on any tax increase is the real barrier to compromise.

Talking up his fiscal conservative bona fides, Scott voiced his opposition to a temporary spending measure that restored $8 billion to federal budgets and gained support from other freshman representatives who took office under promises of total restraint.

“I think they should take that $8 billion and send it home to Americans,” he said. “It is a golden opportunity to show that we are serious about spending.”

The Beaufort County Republican party will run phone banks supporting Scott and presidential nominee Mitt Romney, though political observers have already called Scott’s race in his favor.

Mark Tompkins, a political science professor at the University of South Carolina, said the race between Scott and Democratic challenger Bobbie Rose is assumed an easy win for the Republican.

“RealClearPolitics.com doesn’t even track the race, which is about as sure a thing as you can have,” he said.

But that doesn’t discourage Beaufort County Democratic Party Chairman Blain Lotz, who disputes any incumbency advantage in light of new district lines and argues Rose is better for veterans, the elderly and women.

“That’s what I’m trying to get across,” he said. “She is right on the issues. He has voted down the line with (Wisconsin Republican) Paul Ryan’s budget. That, and Scott’s voting record has been anti-veteran.”

That attack, based on a claim from the Obama administration that the Ryan budget would deal an $11 billion blow to veterans affairs if discretionary spending cuts were applied across the board, has appeared in Rose’s campaign ads.

Up $6 billion from 2012 levels, Ryan’s budget authorizes $134.6 billion for veterans’ affairs and services in 2013 fiscal year, topping out at $175.4 billion by 2022, according to a House spending bill from March. Obama’s budget allocates $137.7 billion in 2013, rising to $212 billion by 2022, according to White House Office of Budget and Management numbers.

Scott challenged that attack, noting spending levels for veterans affairs have and will increase while accusing Rose of political opportunism.

“To play into that narrative is to reframe the question from the conversation in a false way to draw false conclusions,” he said.

Rose, a former educator and small business owner, says she plans to win over independent voters and Republican women in particular by pointing to Scott’s record of voting repeatedly against the Affordable Care Act and for the Ryan budget.

“Make the decision based on that rather than the letter after our name,” she said.

With soldiers returning home in mass, veterans affairs spending should be a higher priority, Rose said.

“There are veterans on a waiting list for eight months to receive care, eight months to see a psychiatrist, and of course the suicide rate is skyrocketing,” she said.

She said his steadfast opposition to the Affordable Care Act places him “directly against women” because the law ends the practice of gender rating in health care, which costs a healthy 40-year-old woman in South Carolina higher rates than a male of the same age who smokes, according to various studies. To those who say she doesn’t stand a chance she warns not to count her out.

“I believe that the Republican Party has sacrificed their - not just their laws that affect them — but sacrificed their dignity for political gain,” she said. “I think people are paying attention, particularly women, and I believe that will help me.”

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I guess Rose does'nt like the governor Nikki Haley because she turned down the Obozo Care too.

Tim Scott has got my vote, but when you are reelected Tim you have got to do something about the influx in your district of illegal aliens. I have talked abou this issue to my congressman till I'm blue in the face. I have stood in front of the Capital building giving facts about this issue and pushed for E-verify. Well we have it another three years with an overwhelming vote from the House and the Senate. But I would like our congressman to sponsor an act which makes it mandatory for all states to comply with E-verify with an amendment adding "The Real ID " which will help with voter fraud and idenity theft in the states which in turn will help protect innocent children of illegal aliens from thier parents using thier social security number to reside in the U. S with all of the amenities and find employment.

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